Xavier Herrero |
Madrid (EFE).- Long before mental health finally found a place in the planet’s media and government agendas, Pink Floyd turned this matter into the substrate of their most ambitious album, “The Dark Side Of The Moon”, that celebrates half a century as a beacon not only for music, but also for life.
According to the source consulted, the date of its publication diverges between March 1, 23 or 24, 1973. Warner Music, owner of its catalogue, comes to solve the dilemma with the edition this Friday of a “deluxe” box that , among other attractions, includes the live performance that the band offered in London in 1974 at the Wembley Empire Pool, material that will be available on vinyl for the first time.
Its dimension in the history of music is already supported by parameters as obvious as commercials: it is one of the best-selling albums in the world, with 50 million copies shipped (although it is not clear either, depending on the reference , if it is the second, third or fourth most successful, always behind Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”).
At that time made up of Roger Waters (bass, vocals), David Gilmour (vocals, guitars), Nick Mason (drums, percussion) and Richard Wright (organ, piano, synthesizers), Pink Floyd greatly filled their coffers thanks to that album, which also it provided them with their biggest international leap to fame after seven previous albums.
Syd Barrett and his role in the band’s history
The British band had suffered in 1968 the forced departure of its hitherto leader, Syd Barrett, afflicted with a mental deterioration that the frequent use of hallucinogens made more severe and that even today continues without a firm diagnosis (there was talk of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, among other possible causes).
That marked the drift of Pink Floyd, who hired Gilmour as a full member to replace him on guitar (with increasingly concise instrumental developments) and who saw how Roger Waters progressively assumed the baton of the group, especially in the compositional aspect.
His was the idea to dedicate his eighth album to the ravages that modern life wreaked on man, heavily influenced by Barrett’s personal experience. Greed, conflict, the shadow of death and mental illness appear in this work, also in some of his previous works, but never in such a clear way in his lyrics.
Its title itself already includes these aspects, since it does not allude to the moon as a satellite, but to the lunatic character of people. It should be noted that they found another band that had made use of it at the same time, so for a while the name of the album was considered the one with the cut that closes it, “Eclipse”, but the poor reception of their possible competitor made them return to the original idea.
hard work in the studio
Another peculiarity of that work was that the songs were presented live before being recorded, so they grew live until they were immortalized in the Abbey Road studios in London.
It was a tour where they were played in the same order as on the album. The Dome, in Brighton (United Kingdom), was the first place to listen to those songs on January 20, 1972. Between May and June of that year they entered to record for the first time, resumed their live performances and it was not until January 1973 that they finished the job.
There were about 60 real days of work in the studio, where they had as a producer who had been an engineer on the Beatles’ albums “Abbey Road” and “Let It Be” and who would end up becoming a music star himself when three years later he started his own project: Alan Parsons.
The technical possibilities of the place undoubtedly contributed to the exquisite result, where they had a 16-track mixing desk that allowed them to treat not only each of the instruments with care, but also the numerous extra-musical resources that they added, from the beat of the heart with which the album ends and begins up to the emblematic coins of “Money”.
That denunciation of ambition was the most successful cut of the album and of Pink Floyd’s entire career, in addition to one of the two advance singles along with “Us And Them”, taken from a total of 10 intertwined songs to add up to barely 42 minutes that make listening to it a very enjoyable experience in contrast to the density that is often attributed to progressive rock.
The iconic cover of Pink Floyd
It only remained to model the last of the elements that have made “Dark Side Of The Moon” something iconic in popular culture: its cover. Designed by Storm Thorgerson, from the Hipgnosis collective, and drawn by George Hardie, the premise was to seek clarity and conciseness by reflecting the light of Pink Floyd shows and their broad spectrum of themes.
This is how the idea of the cover in black was arrived at and the beam that, when filtered through a prism that occupies the central position, comes out refracted in the shape of a rainbow.
As a curiosity, it can be said that the only shadow on a record that provided so much modernity and that aspired to promote empathy was cast by the homophobic criticism of those who did not understand the redesign of those elements for its 50th anniversary and who, upon seeing a multicolored commemorative logo , they barked for what they understood as a defense of the gay community.
